Adults Only

Beaches of Kenya

Copyright 2007 Rachael Ross all rights reserved. Intended for adults only.
Artwork by Calen West all rights reserved. Used with permission.
Story Codes: M+/F, Reluctant, Interracial, Size, Cheat, Flash

Note: This is written as a flash story, meaning it is very short and I based it upon artwork by Calen West. And in fact it is something of collaboration as I'm using his art to complete my little story, finding Calen's work worth far more than just a thousand words. -rr

Beaches of Kenya
- The Dare

    "Here, Here! God save the Queen!" one of the Englishmen was saying, for the tenth time, and he had a lot of friends with him in that small bar in Mombassa. At least a dozen of them, and my friends and I were the only white girls in the place, so of course we'd somehow been invited into the middle of their cheerful revelries.

    "The Queen!" a dozen voices shouted all at once, glasses, and even bottles of gin held high by that point. It was getting late.

    "Sure, the Queen!" I giggled, raising my glass along with my three best friends. "Absolutely!"

    "Oh God! What is this stuff?" Christy rolled her big green eyes. Her auburn hair was wild and clinging to her flushed face as she put her empty glass down unsteadily.

    "I need some air, I think," Monica, my pretty blonde friend grinned at me. "What's wrong with you?"

    "Besides being a little drunk?" I smiled.

    "Drink up, ladies!" some guy was saying, pouring more gin into our glasses and then lifting the bottle. "To Prince Harry!"

    "Prince Harry!" the bar shouted.

    "Come on..." Susan laughed, "We gotta get out of here!" She was pretty drunk too, but at least she had the sense to know that if we didn't get out soon we might not ever get out. Those Brits were getting pretty touchy, some of them. Meaning touchy-feely and we were just four girls all alone.

    "Hey, whyncha wada faddle winnow wattle?" some guy said, and I had no idea what that meant, but sometimes English is a foreign language, especially with drunken Englishman.

    "Oh Jesus," I tugged at my top, feeling hot and sticky all over.

    "Should we get a taxi?" Monica asked.

    "Let's just walk a little," Christy suggested. "The beach is that way, let's go there."

    "Yeah," I agreed, thinking just getting my feet in the ocean would feel pretty good, and I did need to clear my head. I wouldn't say I was totally drunk, but I was definitely buzzed. Nice and loose and the world was a beautiful funny place right then.

    "That was almost as bad as Cancun, remember that?" Susan was asking Monica. "Those Canadian guys?"

    "Oh yeah..." Susan laughed, and they talked about our trip to Mexico during our last college spring break together. We were always together, the four of us; at least we tried to be. But it was getting harder now that we'd graduated college finally. And I was sort of driving another little wedge between us with my upcoming marriage. 

    That was why we there, in Kenya, it was a gift to us from my parents. A present just for me and my three bridesmaids a month before the wedding. Some time to be away from everything but ourselves, a last chance to be together, the four of us and just enjoy life. Did I ever tell you I have great parents? I did and I do, but right then I was thinking maybe having my fiancé there with us wouldn't have been too awful either.

    I missed him.

    "Oh God!" Christy sighed. "That feels so good!" She hadn't even taken off her sandals, but just waded into the high tide, letting the broken waves rush around her calves. 

    "Watch out for sharks!" I laughed, kicking off my tennis shoes, and following everyone else. The Indian Ocean was warm and soothing and I wished I could just dive right in, but wading through the surf was good enough and we walked a ways in the moonlight, just giggling and talking and carrying our shoes. One of us would bend over now and again to pick up a small shell, just so we could all nod appreciatively before tossing it back.

    "Hey, wow!" Susan stopped, looking to her right. "Check those guys out."

    We paused, falling quiet as we followed her gaze, looking at three African guys sitting around a small fire. There was a boat, one of the local sort, small and overturned so it looked like a dark turtle. One guy was sitting on that, the others on the sand. They looked big, like muscular, although it was hard to tell with that small fire throwing shadows everywhere. And they were looking at us from a few dozen feet away.

    "Good night!" one of them said in a deep friendly voice and he was probably smiling, although we couldn't see it. His friends were though, and his words made us all giggle. The tone made it obvious he was welcoming us, not shooing us off to bed.

    "Uh, good night to you!" Christy giggled and she was walking towards them, like she had to, being Christy.

    "Christy!" I whined a little. "What are you...oh, jeeze," I frowned, because Monica was walking towards the guys as well, and Susan, and finally me.

    "Hi," Christy smiled, pulling her hair back from her face because it was a little breezy with the ocean just there.

    "Hello, sit down with us!" the man on the boat said. "We have a fire."

    "I see that, sure," Christy nodded and looked at Susan, who just shrugged. And then we were sitting down, like it was perfectly normal for us to sit around with three big black guys on an empty beach in Kenya.

    "I'm Susan, that's Monica and Christy, and that's Deanna," my friend told them and we all nodded.

    "Hi," I smiled at them, brushing my own reddish brown hair back from my face. "You guys aren't drinking gin, are you?"

    It was a private joke now, and my friends laughed so the African guys did too. They were drinking coffee though, strong native coffee, boiled in a pot on the fire. The bitter smell mixed with the salty air and the thin smoke, all of it filling the night like some exotic incense. They were going fishing soon, the three of them in that boat which looked entirely too small for that great black ocean behind us. They were nice guys, and their English was funny, like they knew the words, but they'd use them just a little out of order, or context maybe. It was fun listening to them talk.

    "Is this a pretty thing." One of them was touching my necklace, a little tiger baby charm I'd gotten at the market. At least I called it a tiger baby, cause that's what it looked like. It hung around my neck on a thin leather cord.

    "Oh? Yeah," I smiled looking down as he held it in his calloused black fingers. "It's cool isn't it?" 

    "Cool," he laughed. "Cool also like you, perhaps?" And I wasn't sure what he meant, until he moved closer and he was putting his arm around me.

    "Cold? Uh, no...I'm fine," I told him. "The fire is warm so..."

    "It is okay," he narrowed his eyes, smiling and hugging me and he was so smooth and strong. I mean I felt tiny next to him, and it was chilly now. "No need for the pretty woman to be cold in Kenya."

    "Uhhh, right..." I giggled and my buzz had worn off, the edge of it at least, but it was nice and so completely different sitting there. I was in Africa, sitting around a small fire on a beautiful moonlit beach, brewing rich bitter-sweet coffee over an open fire. And this man, this total stranger was holding me, a handsome big strong black African man. He was making me feel...yeah.

    "Ohh, you're so sweet!" Monica was giggling, leaning her head close to the man next to her, listening to him whisper something and then they'd both laugh.

    "No!" Christy gasped softly. 

    And "Really? Never?" Susan looked at the man between them with happy doubt on her pretty face. 

    The man said something and my friends laughed. Everyone was having fun and Monica was getting up, squatting by Susan and Christy and they giggled about something, nodding and smiling, but I wasn't paying that much attention until Susan got up, brushing sand off her long legs, moving so she could sit by me.

    "Having fun?" she smiled at me, putting her head close to mine, and looking past me at my African friend.

    "Yeah," I shrugged and then I caught her tone and my eyes narrowed. "Why?"

    "We have your dare," Susan laughed and I glanced at my other two friends, sitting together across the fire from me. They looked rather pleased with themselves. Too pleased with themselves.

    "My dare?" I blinked. "What? Now?"

    We all had one dare on this trip. It was a game we'd invented on our first spring break, as 18 year old college freshman, and so naturally we were going to play it on this trip as well. The rules were simple; all three of us had to agree on a dare, a specific task, for the fourth girl. It had to be something relatively easy, legal, and not dangerous. But definitely something we wouldn't normally do on our own, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a dare. 

    A dare could come anytime and anyplace, so long as it was agreed to by the other three, as I said. The girl who got the dare could pass, and there wasn't a specific penalty for doing that, but none of us ever had passed on one before, so...Being the first, and maybe only one of us to decline a dare would be pretty bad. 

    "Yeah, right now!" Susan smiled like she'd just swallowed a canary and I was afraid to ask.

    "What is it?"

    She leaned close, putting her lips to my ear and whispered. Christy and Monica burst out giggling as my eyes flew open and my face must have turned red, I mean red enough so they could tell I was pretty shocked, maybe even embarrassed by their idea.

    "You can't dare me to do that!" I stared at Susan. "I'm getting married in a month!"

    "Hey, it's a legal dare," Susan nodded. "And it isn't like you haven't dared me to do stuff like that, you know you have!"

    "Yeah, but you weren't engaged," I frowned at her. "Come on, anything else."

    "Nope," Monica said over the fire, having heard what I was saying. "It's a dare, Deanna!"

    "I triple dare!" Christy laughed, "So you gotta do it now!"

    "Or do ya want to chicken out?" Susan grinned at me, knowing I was probably the last of us to ever admit defeat. I wasn't the most outgoing, or the most beautiful, or even the smartest of us, but I was definitely the most competitive. A fact my three best friends and bridesmaids were exploiting, in my opinion.

    "I have to do it with all three of them?" I asked, glancing at the men who were all smiling at me now, wondering what was going on, but sensing it might be fun.

    "Yep!" Susan nodded.

    "But what if they won't..."

    "They will!" she laughed. "Are you gonna take the dare? Or be chicken-girl the rest of your life?"

    "Chicken-girl?" I laughed despite myself and nodded slowly. "Anything but that," I sighed then, thinking of my fiancé back home, of my upcoming marriage and how this really might be my last good time alone with my friends. My last chance to...

    "Yeah. I'll do it." I giggled, blushing once more as I looked at the black man next to me, and then at his two friends. I was thinking of my fiancé and my marriage in less than a month, but... "A dare is a dare, right?"

end
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